A journey of finding primordial purity of thought,word and action within oneself.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Is India's romance with communism over?

An year ago, India’s red states,
West Bengal and Kerala voted the communists out of power after a historical
tenure in the government. Many people raised the inevitable question: Is
India’s romance with communism over? How is it relevant in the post-liberalization
era and the world’s largest spiritually oriented nation? Let us examine the
history and growth of Communism in India before we evaluate the relevance of
the movement today.

The roots of the communist
movement in India go back to 1920’s when Communist
Party of India was founded as an alternative to the existing Congress led
anti-imperialist movement. The movement was driven by angst against the
economic injustice of the propertied classes of both Britain and India. The
“revolt” was not against the imperialism of the British but against the
capitalist system in practice.

Victor Hugo once famously
remarked that no force could stop an idea whose time has come. In many ways,
Communism feels like an idea whose time never really came in India. Communism
in India as it was practiced and offered to the people was never in sync with
the socio-cultural norms of the majority. In trying to bring about radical
change through a revolutionary zeal, the idea missed the opportunity of changing
things at the margin. I cite two
specific ideological errors made by the movement which I think explain the
reason for its failures in India.

National identity: No real national spirit existed among a group of
peasants, landowners and middle class proletariat who combined for
socio-economic reasons. The fact that it failed to create a new national
identity and unite the masses like Gandhiji and other Congress leaders did
during the pre-Independence era was one of main weaknesses in its institutional
structure. Not addressing the caste and religion issues through continuous
dialogue was one of the biggest mistakes of the communist movement during this
time. Imposing their caste and religion free ideology on the masses instead
only further alienated them.

Means of revolution: The means of violence chosen by Communist
movement was easy to be negated by the militarily powerful British opposition.
Gandhiji's method, by contrast, was to slowly pick apart at the government's view
of liberalism and tackle the issues on the margin. This proved to be highly effective
because the colonial state found it more frustrating to battle a morally
forceful yet peaceful movement. I would hence argue that this movement managed
to damage the government more effectively than the violent and disorganized
methods of the CPI.

Therefore, it is not surprising
that Marxist roots only persisted in two of India’s most literate states of
Kerala and West Bengal where people’s aspirations matched with the ideologies
of the Left. However, the last year’s state election debacles of CPI and CPI
(M) in both these states point to a trend of the movement losing public support
even in these states. But it needs to be pointed out that the unruly offshoots
of Naxalism and Maoism still dominate a third of our districts in India. After
the Dantewada massacre where 76 jawans of the central paramilitary were
surrounded and butchered in cold blood by well-armed Naxalites, the little
romanticism public intellectuals and larger public had for such extremist
ideologies seem to have evaporated. Our internal security as rightly pointed
out by our Prime Minister is our greatest threat and needs to be dealt with
utmost urgency and seriousness. In looking back at the history of communist
movement and its loss to Gandhiji’s Satyagraha, Government and civil society
will do well to pursue its own truth through a rigorous and community based
development agenda in these affected districts. In a country like India, it
would be hard and foolish to pronounce a judgment on the end of communist
movement. But, by choosing to be not in sync with the socio-cultural and
economic norms of the larger society, the communists are being clearly
overpowered in the battleground of ideas.

About Me

Indian by nationality, journeyman by choice, and will be something by destiny.I seek the most sought after question in human history - Who am I? And,hopefully in the process demystify some elements of the physical, and the metaphysical world around me.